Tuesday, August 15, 2006

Blogger's Beta

As you all are no doubt aware, Blogger is the content management system we currently use to power this site. I have also used Blogger for my personal blog for quite awhile. In fact, it was through there that Kiltak found me and brought me on-board [Geeks Are Sexy]. It may not have the super-powered interconnected social functionality of something like Live Journal, or have the power and myriad of options that a full-blown CMS has, but Blogger blogs are still capable publishing mechanisms that are a part of a large, linked, Blogger-web. It is actually quite a good, solid, and flexible platform for relatively simple stand-alone blogs.

Unfortunately for Blogger, this site long ago stopped being a anything close to "relatively simple." We have multiple contributors, are producing and publishing more varied content than in the beginning, and our needs have outgrown the Blogger platform. Plus, we don't generally enjoy being eaten by their anti-spam bots.

Not too long ago, Kiltak announced the acquisition of a domain name. Since then, we've been poking around looking for a good web host, and discussing possibilities for a content management system. And yes, we are still dying to get our hands on "geeksaresexy [dot] com". It may not loo like much is happening with this move, but trust me, wheels are turning in the background. Slowly, but surely, we'll get there.

But, in light of Blogger's announcement (and a little hands-on testing), it may be worth giving them a brief second try. The web app itself feels a lot snappier over all, and its publishing behavior has gotten some significant improvements. There are very welcome "tagging" and security features in the works, and the ease with which basic template modifications can be made is actually rather impressive. Tech Crunch has a more detailed review/preview of what to look forward to.

Will these additions and improvements be enough to keep this site on Blogger? Probably not, but that remains to be seen. I, for one, am still planning on migrating to my own server space and a better content management solution. But for all of you happy Blogger-bloggers out there, start getting excited. You guys have some good stuff coming!